Versioned vDisk upgrade

This vDisk upgrade method can be selected when upgrading vDisks from 6.x to the latest version of the target device software. This method reimages to a maintenance version of the vDisk, allowing production devices to continue running and booting from the production version of the vDisk. After the upgraded version of the vDisk is promoted to production, target devices will boot or reboot from the upgraded vDisk version.

Upgrade prerequisites include:

Upgrading all Provisioning Servers

Upgrading Provisioning Services Consoles

Creating a backup copy of the vDisk

To upgrade, complete the procedure that follows.

Boot the Maintenance device from the managed vDisk while in Maintenance mode.

From the product installation directory, run P2PVS.exe to reverse image using volume-to-volume imaging. Select the vDisk as the source and the hard disk drive (HDD) as the destination. If your destination partition is on any partition other than partition 1, you must edit the boot.ini or bcedit partition settings before rebooting from the HDD.

Reboot the Maintenance device from the HDD (do not PXE boot).

On the Maintenance device, uninstall 6.x target device software, and then install the latest version of the target device software.

Run the Provisioning Services Imaging Wizard to create a vDisk image, create the target device if it does not exist, and assign the vDisk to the target device.

Test streaming the new vDisk image by booting a Maintenance or Test device from the upgraded vDisk.

Manual reverse imaging using P2PVS

When manually performing reverse imaging using P2PVS, consider the following:

Boot the PVS target device into the vDisk using private\maintenance mode.

Install PVS_UpgradeWizard.exe or PVS_UpgradeWizard_x64.exe from the Upgrade folder of the ISO image of the latest Provisioning Services release to get the latest P2PVS.exe. The upgrade wizard can also be installed with the Provisioning Services meta-installer using the Target Device Installation > Install Upgrade Wizard option.

Click the From drop-down menu and choose Provisioning Services vDisk and click Next.

In the partition screen, select the partitions. All system partitions, regardless of whether they have a drive letter or not, are used in reverse imaging. Click Next.

Click Convert on the last page to begin reverse imaging.

Important

Reverse imaging for BIOS systems is non-destructive. The partition table of the system is not altered. Because PVS imaging is blocked base, the partition table of the local hard disk must be the same as those of the vDisk. Reverse imaging for UEFI systems is destructive. All partitions on the local hard disk will be destroyed and re-created to match those of the vDisk.

About reverse imaging on UEFI VMs

Reverse imaging can be used to update antivirus and malware definitions, however, UEFI cannot perform this task as BIOS can perform it.

When reverse imaging UEFI VMs, consider the following:

Reverse imaging UEFI VMs can only be done manually using P2PVS.exe, using either:

GUI

Command line

Important

When using reverse imaging on UEFI VMs, consider that the process is destructive, all data is lost as a result.

Automated inline upgrade

Use the Automated vDisk Upgrade method when upgrading from 5.1.x, 5.6.x, or 6.0–6.1, and the Hyper-V upgrade method cannot be used. This upgrade method takes an existing vDisk and converts it to the current product version using the Upgrade Wizard and Upgrade Manager.

Prerequisites:

All Provisioning Services Consoles have been upgraded.

All Provisioning Servers have been upgraded.

A copy of the vDisk has been created prior to upgrading.

Automated Inline vDisk upgrades require that the vDisk is offline to target devices until the vDisk upgrade completes. To avoid vDisks being offline, create a clone of the vDisk and use it for the upgrade process. Then, after the upgrade completes, target devices can be migrated to the upgraded vDisk.

On the master target device or maintenance device, depending on the target device platform, run either PVS_UpgradeWizard.exe or PVS_UpgradeWizard_x64.exe.

On the master target device, run UpgradeConfig.exe from the Windows Start menu shortcut or from the product installation directory:

Specify a local account with Administrator privilege to Auto Logon. This local account cannot have an empty password.

Specify a local partition to which reverse imaging clones data. The original hard drive that the vDisk was cloned from is recommended.
Note: If this is a new hard drive, use the manual upgrade method to initialize the hard drive.

Specify the Provisioning Server IP address and a user account and password to connect to Upgrade Manager. This account cannot have an empty password.

Click OK.

UpgradeConfig performs a sanity check on various parameters. If everything passes, the UpgradeConfig exits, and then reboots the machine to start the upgrade script.

The machine reboots several times, and then display a message to indicate that the script has successfully completed.

Note

Auto Logon clears when the upgrade completes. If Auto Logon is wanted for vDisk deployment, setup Auto Logon as necessary.

Upgrading vDisks manually

Use the manual upgrade as a universal approach to upgrading vDisks, or if any of the following are true:

The vDisk has gone through several modifications in Private Image mode

The original hard drive is no longer available

The manual upgrade method includes completing the following tasks:

Image the vDisk back to the master target device’s hard drive.

Install the latest product software on the master target device.

Image the target device’s hard drive onto the vDisk file.

Boot from the vDisk.

Image back to master target device’s hard drive

There are two procedures that allow you to image a vDisk back to a hard drive. The procedure you select depends on the state of the disk drive you are imaging to. You can image back to the original hard drive from which the vDisk was created. This is the recommended method. Alternatively, you can image back using an unformatted, uninitialized hard disk drive.

Image back to the original hard drive from which the vDisk was created

Note the partition letter of the active partition of the original hard disk. If new, format the disk before continuing.

Run the Image Builder utility on the target device. This utility is at \Program Files\Citrix\Provisioning Services\P2PVS.exe.

Specify the drive letter of the newly created partition (or the original boot HDD partition) as the Destination Drive. The destination drive should point to the vDisk first partition by default.

Proceed cloning the hard drive image to the vDisk Destination Drive.

To connect the vDisk to the Provisioning Server, from the Console, set the target device to boot from the hard drive, then PXE boot the target device. If this step is not completed, the Provisioning Server fails to connect with the vDisk.

Create a new primary partition, as the first partition, assign a drive letter to it, and then format the partition.

Right-click on the newly created partition, then choose Mark Partition as Active.

Delete the boot.ini.hdisk file from the root of the vDisk.

Run the Image Builder utility on the target device. This utility is at \Program Files\Citrix\Provisioning Services\P2PVS.exe.

Specify the drive letter of the newly created partition (or the original boot HDD partition) as the Destination Drive. The destination drive should point to the vDisk first partition by default.

Clone the hard drive image to the vDisk Destination Drive.

To connect the vDisk to the Provisioning Server, from the Console, set the target device to boot from the hard drive, then PXE boot the target device. If this step is not completed correctly, the Provisioning Server fails to connect with the vDisk.

Install master target device software

Complete the following steps to install the latest product software on the Master Target Device.

Run the new Provisioning Server Target Device installer on the target device.

PXE boot the target device.

Image the hard drive

Complete the following steps to image the target device’s hard drive onto the vDisk file:

Run the Image Builder utility on the target device. This utility is at \Program Files\Citrix\Provisioning Services\P2PVS.exe.

Specify the drive letter of the newly created partition (or the original boot HDD partition) as the Destination Drive. The destination drive should point to the vDisk first partition by default.

Clone the hard drive image to the vDisk Destination Drive.

Boot from the vDisk

Using the Console, set the target device on the Provisioning Server to boot from vDisk, then reboot the target device. The new target device should now be running the new vDisk image.

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